5. Online job demand rose in May in 15 of the 28 major metro markets monitored by the Monster Index, with Orlando registering the largest monthly gain. Compared to May last year, all metro areas have experienced employment gains.

1. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?

Neither. This is a false dichotomy. Population is growing and aging, population of younger and less skilled workers is growing, and younger workers are more likely to have children and need food stamps. It is a bad sign that businesses can not or will not pay a living wage.

2. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?

Foreclosures are not the only measure of the real estate market.

3. Do you think that [missed mortgage paments] is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?

If someone misses a mortgage that is a reflection of their personal finances, not a reflection of the housing market which consists of homes being bought and sold.

4. How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?

Don’t banks “own our homes” until they are paid for? Where is the surprise here? Again, what has this to do with the market which consists of homes being bought and sold?

5. With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?

This may or may not wreck the economy eventuallym Maybe other taxes will be offset. What has that to do with whether the current recovery is real?

6. Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that "terrible cuts" are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?

California could spend its way into trouble regardless of whether the currrent recovery is real, California is ne state.

7. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?

Depends on whether you believe government spending is a stimulus or a drag on the economy.

8. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate.

Wealth is not draining out if we profit more from what we sell than they profit on what we buy. How am I (and therefore we) better off if I buy something made here that costs more? Are you proposing government regulation to control what we buy?

9. If you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?

I’m not spending a dollar a second and I’m not living 31,000 years. How can anyone in their right mind think this has anything to do with whether the economy is recovering?

10. According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?

In 2015 that may be a problem if we don’t fix it in the meantime. What has that got to do with whether we are seeing a current recover of economic activity?

it only looks like a strong recovery because the crash was so deep and the comparisons are so easy. using % changes can be very misleading that way. you need to look at the economy, not its first derivative.

comparing current levels to 2007-8 shows you how weak it actually is and how far off the peak we still are. real manufacturing output still looks like 2002 in actual output. real retail sales look like 2004. actual employment levels are still very low.

also:

your point about missed mortgage payments not being meaningful to the real estate market is pretty specious. they most certainly are. distressed home owners are more likely to need to sell and less likely to want to buy. that has a very direct effect on housing prices.

most of the rest of your arguments equally miss the point.

1. it's a bad sign. its' a sign of economic duress and will increase government spending.

4. a specious argument. lot's of people have equity in their homes or won them outright. the shift towards bank ownership is a sign that fewer do, which is a bad sign for personal balance sheets.

5. increasing prices for inputs through taxes will slow a recovery.

6. cuts in state spending but not in taxes will be a drag on economic performance.

7. same as above - less spending and higher taxes are not good for GDP.

10. it's already a problem with government borrowing crowding out private lending and it's going to keep getting worse.

if you buy a stock at 100 and it drops to 10, you suffer a 90% loss. if it then rallies to 30, that's a 200% gain. sounds great! but it's not. you're still down 70%.

this is why % changes (first derivative) are so misleading.

we suffered a terrible liquidity crunch in 2008-9 that has abated (though threatens to return) that seized the whole economy up. the return of liquidity and stacks of stimulus have pumped money into the system, but we are nowhere near health levels despite being able to put up impressive sounding percentage gains.

but they only look high because they have such easy comparisons. growth will slow in % terms in the back half of the year as the comps get hard.

What you seem to be pains at is to hide or forget is that most of the 25 questions are dealing with more extortion by the federal government of the taxpayers for the less than useless short term fix...

if you buy a stock at 100 and it drops to 10, you suffer a 90% loss. if it then rallies to 30, that's a 200% gain. sounds great! but it's not. you're still down 70%.

this is why % changes (first derivative) are so misleading.

I realize that. I don't see how it changes the point. Your argument was that:

1. It is easy to look good now because a year ago was so bad.

2. High growth after a massive drop is to be expected.

My response is that it is also easy to look BAD now because last year was incredibly bad. Depends on how you compare, as you point out.

And I don't see why high growth is to be "expected" after a massive drop. Desired, maybe, but expected, no.

I agree with you comment about missed mortgage payments having an eventual secondary effect, but it is just as specious to use this kind of statement as a condemnation or proof of the entire body of market indicators the MJP has provided.

last year was a liquidity squeeze. such shocks are highly transitory. liquidity dries up, big drop, it comes back, big jump.

the kind of 10-14% increases we are seeing in employment indexes sound huge, but in light of the 20-30% declines that came before, they aren't. a 10% jump after a 5% drop would be huge, but after what we saw, it's just not that big of a deal, especially if monster is including census workers in its numbers (though i don;t know if they are)

i'm not arguing we have not recovered some from the depths of the economic cardiac arrest, merely that the low hanging fruit has been grabbed and that the actual underlying economic trend is quite tepid, not v shaped.

after a big drop, even moderate recovery can look big in percentage terms when measured from the trough.

however, it's important to realize that it takes a 25% increase from trough to get back to even after a 20% drop from initial conditions.

1 X .80 = .8 X 1.25 = 1

so, a 10% increase after a 20% drop (especially one with such a transitory and proximate cause like a liquidity lock up) is a tepid recovery and nothing like v shaped. even a 20% increase over the same period of time as a 20% decline is not a "v" shape. a 20% gain after a 20% drop leaves you 4% short of initial levels.

it's easier to show 2% growth after a big decline than it was before the drop. the first 2% of recovery is fewer units than the first 2% drop

to be a V in real units, growth measured as a % has to be higher coming out of a downturn than going in. a 2% increase from 80 is 1.6 units, 20% less than a 2% drop from 100 (2 units). we are seeing nothing like that. growth coming out is lower than growth coming in, thus, no V. worse, GDP growth is already slowing as a % when it would be accelerating in a healthy economy undergoing a strong recovery.

See new post on ISM Non-Manufacturing Business Index showing strong V-shaped recovery, with levels back to pre-recession 2007 levels. Note that this index doesn't rely on year-to-year percentage changes, and still shows a strong V-shaped recovery underway.

You said we seem to be up less this may than we were down last year, so it's still a net loss of jobs and a tepid looking recovery.

You said it it was a tepid recovery because it wasn't V shaped.

So if the crash was Deep on the way down and you had a V shaped recovery that would be an extraordinary recovery, not an ordinary one. Therefore it isn't an argument that makes this one a tepid recovery.

I don't need a numerical example to understand a bad idea when I see it.

All I said was it doesn't mean squat as to ANYTHING how fast the previous fall was. You cannot use it to guage the subsequent recoery or any recovery, you need a different measure.

The whole idea of % up vs percent down is meaningless because the comparison is meaningless, not because the percentages have a different base.

Keynes was wrong about most things, as should be evident by now. Read Sowell, read Friedman, read Hayek, read von Mises, read Hazlitt. The world will make much more sense. Your brain will quit hurting.

What you are missing in this is that you are missing the entire point. You should probably quit reading graphs, and stop obsessing on Vs. Isn't there some other letter you understand better?

"I do understand percentages, even though I am a farmer."

A Farmer? Now you're a farmer? What happened to being a chemist? or a "chief research scientist"?

You are truly amazing. You seem to have an enormous amount to say on subjects about which you don't appear to have a clue. You argue just to hear your own voice.

There's no need to disagree with every statement someone makes here. There is especially no need to respond in this space to a multi-question opinion piece on another site.

Most commenters here hope to learn from what others have to say. If you too hope to learn anything, you might try reading more carefully and completely, and think about what you have read so that comprehension has a chance to take place.

If you feel that you already know everything you need to know, then you are wasting your time here, and you're certainly wasting everyone else's time with your constant stream of drivel.

you need a math class buddy. you simply do not understand percentages at all.

if you can't see that 2% of 100 is more than 2% of 80, i'm not really sure what to say to you. we don't live in a first derivative world, we live in a real output world. it takes fewer units to show 2% growth from 80 than you lost to show 2% decline from 100.

"You do understand that the V shape means squat worth of nothing, right?"

apart from being an appalling mangling of the language, this also doesn't make any sense at all. mark argues for a v. i argue against it. a v does matter at is is a benchmark to see if we are recovering as quickly as we declined.